The Ebola outbreak declared in mid-May in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has already surpassed the thresholds of 6,800 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to authorities, in a context of growing concern about the risk that the expansion of the disease will completely overwhelm the response capacities, supported by the international community.
The National Institute of Public Health (INSP) has indicated in its latest report that so far 6,843 infections and 3,310 deaths have been recorded, including 86 cases and 43 deaths in the last 24 hours, with a particular incidence in the province of Ituri, the current epicenter of the outbreak.
Likewise, it has specified that to date 1,611 patients have recovered from the disease, while 833 remain hospitalized or in isolation. Thus, the fatality rate stands at 48.4%, while contact tracing reaches 86.5% at this time.
Ituri concentrates 79.8% of the detected cases in the six affected provinces --North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Bas-Uele, Tshopo, and Ituri itself-- with 61 of the 151 health zones in these regions already hit by the spread of the virus, according to figures released by the INSP.
The outbreak in the DRC is already the deadliest in the country's history, surpassing that recorded between 2018 and 2020, and projections indicate that it could exceed the one that occurred between 2014 and 2016 in West Africa, which left 28,616 cases and 11,325 deaths in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).
DRC --which in December 2025 declared the end of another outbreak, in this case in Kasai-- is considered the country with the greatest global experience in managing the Ebola virus, having faced more than a dozen outbreaks since the pathogen was identified in 1976 in a dual outbreak that had one of its focal points in the Congolese locality of Yambuku, on the banks of the Ebola River, from which the disease took its name.